Sharesight Review: How to Track Your Real Investment Returns

If you've got money spread across a couple of brokers, maybe a KiwiSaver account you don't think about much, and a spreadsheet you started once and never opened again, working out what you've actually made is muuuuch harder than it sounds. Your broker app shows a balance and a rough gain percentage, but that number is usually incomplete without considering everything else too.

It rarely accounts for the dividends you've received, currency movements if you hold anything priced in USD or AUD, or the brokerage you paid getting in and out. Add a second or third platform into the mix and you're not really tracking your portfolio anymore, you're guessing at it.

A dedicated portfolio tracker like Sharesight pulls every account into one place and works out your actual return, capital gains, dividends and currency effects included, without you needing to build a spreadsheet to do it.

Why doesn't your broker show your real return?

Most trading platforms are built for buying and selling, not for reporting. They'll show an unrealised gain on what you're currently holding, but that figure usually leaves out dividend income altogether, and it doesn't adjust for currency.

That last part matters more than people think. When the New Zealand dollar moves against the US or Australian dollar, that swing changes what your offshore holdings are worth in NZD terms, separate from anything the underlying share price did. Most apps just don't split that out for you.

What is Sharesight and who is it built for?

Sharesight is a portfolio tracking platform founded in Wellington in 2007. It's since grown into one of the more widely used tools of its kind, with over 500,000 investors globally, mostly in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the UK, Europe and the US.

It connects with hundreds of brokers across those markets and covers more than 700,000 shares, ETFs, funds and crypto assets across 60-plus exchanges, so most things a retail investor holds can be tracked on it.

How does Sharesight pull in your trades automatically?

A few brokers connect directly, so buys and sells show up in Sharesight without manual entry. Where there's no direct feed, Sharesight gives you a dedicated email address, and you forward your trade confirmations to it, or set up a forwarding rule so it happens on its own.

Bringing in an existing portfolio, you can import your full trade history from a supported broker in one go, or just enter trades by hand if you've only got a handful. Crypto works the same way, since most exchanges don't have direct integrations yet.

How does it work out your actual returns?

Once your holdings are in, the investment overview breaks your performance down into capital gains, income, and currency gains, instead of lumping it all into one number. That split is the whole point: it's how you can see a chunk of a portfolio's return came from currency movement, not the shares themselves going up.

You can also benchmark a portfolio, or a single holding, against an index or another stock, a reasonable way to sense-check whether your picks are actually beating the market.

How does Sharesight handle dividends and reinvestment?

Dividend reinvestment plans sound simple until you try tracking them by hand: working out how many extra shares you were issued, at what price, and keeping that accurate for tax purposes. Sharesight pulls in dividend data automatically, and once a holding is flagged as part of a DRP, it calculates the reinvested shares and adds them to your position on its own.

Getting this right matters more than it looks. In a country that taxes capital gains, a sloppy reinvestment record can mean you overpay, or underpay, tax when you eventually sell.

What tax reporting does Sharesight offer New Zealand and Australian investors?

This is where the paid plans earn their keep, and it's the main reason a lot of Kiwi and Aussie investors sign up at all.

Starting with New Zealand, on its higher-tier plans, Sharesight generates a Foreign Investment Fund report, calculating FIF income under both the Fair Dividend Rate and Comparative Value methods once an offshore share portfolio crosses the threshold that triggers the rules.

Investors in Australia, the UK, Canada or the US get equivalent reports built for their own tax rules instead, covering taxable income and capital gains tax with a choice of cost-basis method. Either way, the report is meant to be something you or your accountant can use directly, not something pieced together by hand.

Is Sharesight free to use?

There's a free plan that stays free indefinitely, enough to track a small portfolio and get a feel for the reporting. The paid tiers raise how many holdings and portfolios you can track and add the more advanced reports, including the FIF and capital gains reports above.

So is a portfolio tracker like this worth setting up?

If everything you own sits with one broker and you never touch anything offshore, you probably don't need this. But once you're spread across platforms or currencies, doing this by hand gets tedious and error-prone fast. This kind of tool exists to take that admin off your plate, so the numbers you're looking at are the ones that actually matter.

This article is general information, not personalised financial advice. Talk to a licensed financial adviser for a strategy tailored to your own situation.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Is Sharesight free to use in New Zealand?

Yes, Sharesight has a free plan available indefinitely, though it limits how many holdings and portfolios you can track and doesn't include the FIF or capital gains tax reports.

Does Sharesight track KiwiSaver accounts?

Sharesight is built around listed shares, ETFs, managed funds and crypto rather than KiwiSaver directly, though you can add a fund manually if you want to monitor it alongside the rest of your portfolio.

Do I need a portfolio tracker if I only use one broker?

Not necessarily. If your whole portfolio sits with one provider that already reports well, a separate tracker adds less. It matters most once you're spread across platforms or currencies, where working out your real return by hand gets genuinely difficult.